Why is every event about just maxing kills on ultimate?

[Miku]

Why is every event now just about killing as many enemies as possible on ultimate? We used to have some variety as cookies would have the same drop rate on any difficulty so it could be a good time to play on normal, but no more. Now all of badges, cookies, eggs, presents are just about kills on ultimate. So these all greatly favor quests which kill enemies as quickly and easily as possible. And then some people might wonder why half the server only plays MAE:Forest. And anguish is greatly undervalued in most events as it doesn't even boost the drop rate of the event items at all.

So my real question is, why is it this way? There are so many more parameters that drop rates of event items could be based on, such as the enemies...

1. Experience points
2. Weapon pattern dropped
3. Meseta amount dropped
4. Enemy's HP
5. Enemies that have been slain the lower number of times in total on the server
6. How high ranking of armors are dropped in the area
7. Some slightly more manual setups like just area-specific, and just specifically giving higher rates in harder areas and lower rates in easier areas.
8. Some combination of the above.

Maybe someone could enlighten me about why the current way is better. Or is it just that it's simple and easy?

 

[Varista]

I can imagine the reason being is because its simplest and easiest to do it by kills or quest completions. Easiest to track, easiest to implement. All the other methods you mentioned are really just placebo anyways. When you think about it, there's no significant differentiator between an event tracking how many kills you got based on an enemies Meseta dropping versus just giving you a flat value for each kill, outside of the obvious of it just being more work the developers have to endure and put in to make it functional.

I'd imagine the reason why most things are based in Ultimate is because that's where the majority of the player base plays. There's not a contingent of people playing on Very Hard on the regular for some significant advantage outside of a couple of RBR related outliers. Cookies did still drop in lower difficulties for Halloween, they just had harder drop rates due to the fact that you can kill enemies so much faster in Normal-V.Hard mode compared to Ultimate. Could you imagine making the easiest drop rate for Cookies in Normal mode? What a blunder to the economy that would be.

I'm sure if there was a cool and interesting mechanic they could pull off for an event that seems within the boundaries of their limitations or time constraints they would do it but the fact remains that this is a server that is ran by volunteers and owned by people who have full time jobs and families. I would very well understand why maybe they're reluctant to make something more complicated than it needed to be for the sake of authenticity or personality that differentiates from the rest when its both unnecessary and, most likely, going to be heavily criticized by the community if the features aren't always "respecting the player's time".

People did hate on the implementation of boxes sometimes being immune to damage as an April Fools prank after all, so imagine the backlash for an actual event.

 

[Ade]

98.5% of the experience needed to reach Lv. 200 is on Ultimate. You are literally 1.5% of the way to 200, EXP-wise, when you reach Lv. 80. Forcing people to reach Ultimate for the best rewards is not exclusionary or gatekeeping. It only takes a modest time investment to reach Ultimate for the first time, and the overwhelming majority of the remainder of your PSO tenure will be there.

N-VH are great for that wonderous, first time experience of PSO, which is itself very rewarding. For all subsequent characters and playthroughs following that first time, N-VH will be more of an afterthought, as they should be.

The 1.5% stepping stone should not be given the same level of attention / resources as the other 98.5%.